Really? I found that to be significantly hopeful. The third act is a downer, though, I'll give you that much.
Well I guess it is, but something about it makes me even more sad... It's kind of pointless, isn't it? That's why I added the whole game in parentheses. The endings leave you wondering about the future when it's debatable whether there's any point in continuing(and I kind of felt bad for 9S...). It might be the music but I don't know...
I've noticed that too... After I'd spent a while analyzing shot composition, story structure and dialogue writing (I'm very interested in how film, TV, theater and games communicate ideas to the audience), I started appreciating a lot of the stuff I was consuming much more, but it managed to elicit much less of an emotional response.
I haven't gone that deep into analysis as I don't value my subjective interpretation much but just being vaguely aware of the technicalities can ruin the experience for me for some reason.
I remember your mentioning that you were working on a game of yours by the way. How is that going?
However, the things that are at the top of my favorites pile have managed to bypass that block for me (that's probably why they are there).
The things that managed to do that for me are mostly related to my childhood either in that I played them as a child or there's another similar association. I suppose that not many new things will be able to make their way to my list in the future. I really wish that weren't the case.
Oh and I actually haven't seen/played anything on your list other than Nier Automata.